A Little Tinker with Fate
by DNA
Summary: My reason why we all know Max lives--of course!!;) Fits with the cannon I'm following with Redemption 1 and Redemption 2: Master of Horse. Criticize if you want...or just be nice and review...ta;)


                Okay (deep breath;)...in between attempting to stay up with work, school and the usual...along with cleaning up Chapter 5 of Redemption 2:  Master of Horse (which is now typed, just needs to be proofed and should be posted by end of the week;), there came this...what is now before your eyes.  It all started when I rented the DVD of Gladiator just last week, and was watching the movie for the first time with the voice-over commentary of Peter Scalia, Ridley Scott, and that third guy (don't remember the name).  So in the part where Commodus decides to poke our dear max in the side/back with a stiletto, one of the renowned directors says something to the effect of imagining our young, enraged Emperor consulting with a physician about just where to harm our hero.  And wonder of wonders, I hit upon this forthcoming prequel to my own follow-up, ever slowly emerging, but will be finished oneday, sequel.  It just sort of gets more complex as I go along, although the storyline events are still jotted, and as clear in the head as ever.

NOTE:  the events of this cannon take place just prior to Redemption 1: Chapter One, just after Lucilla presumably spills the beans to her brother about all that went down with her part in the plot to help Maximus escape.  If read in that way, this will make a whole lot more sense, as will the inclusion of the characters, Maeve and Nemhyn, at the end of this…prologue..

**Prelude to Redemption: Part One—A Short Dissection of Fate**

**_Ides of May--night before the battle between Maximus and Commodus_******

**_The Eternal City_****--182 CE**

                They dulled quicker than iron , these copper needles, securing a flap of skin.  To compound matters, they rusted frequently, but he could buy them en-mass, obtaining them with greater ease from the market just down the lane outside his apartments, not having to wander his way through the chaotic masses of Rome's cluttered streets all the way to the Forum.  Plus, his assistant, a rather tongue-tied boy by the name of Demetrius, who was still awed at having been taken under the wing of the great Master, was not familiar enough with the meandering streets of the capital, as yet, to know how to avoid the pick-pockets and thieves who haunted the back alleys, even during the day. 

Light filtered into the room with a rose-tinged glow of sunset, spliced by the wooden slabs of the shutters to keep out the noise from the ruckus of the streets below.  Unfortunately, while the noise was muted, the shutters did nothing to keep out the rancid odor of the fish-market that was just down the winding avenue, and the cries of the fish vendors still drifted, albeit in muffled fashion, between the stone buildings of the two and three story rises that lined the residential quarter of the Capital he had made his permanent dwelling while in service to the Imperial court.

                Suspended over the dissecting table was a lamp, its flickering illumination catching the small, fanged teeth of the tiny monkey hissing its vicious defiance.  Demetrius had suffered minor cuts to the fingers in tying the creature down, but after a losing battle, the animal's limbs were now bound, secured with leather twine, and bolted so the monkey was splayed—helpless.  

                The old Master's eyes had grown weaker as the years passed, and while he was still in relatively vital health considering he had seen just over five decades, he relied more and more on his young assistant to do the delicate task of slicing through flesh and tendon.  As a last minute assurance against getting a finger inadvertently bitten, however, a thong of linen had been fastened around the creature's mouth to spare Demetrius' fingers anymore trauma.

                The creature was still hissing its pointless vehemence as the Master placed strong, sure hands under its chin to hold back its head.  The sound rapidly became an ear shattering utterance of terror as Demetrius increased the pressure of the sharp scalpel just along the side of source of that precious voice.  The Master saw the young man's hand shake, disconcerted by the all too human sound of the cry.  Demetrius' dark eyes clouded with distaste, but he managing to overcome his initial aversion, focusing on severing the soft point of flesh which gave like melted butter, blood welling, beautiful, even as the creature's cries grew more desperate and disturbing.  

                "Now deeper, lad," guided the Master in his calm, grave-voiced instruction.  " Through to the muscles guarding the control of that voice, but not so harshly you severe the nerve as yet," holding the terrorized creature still while Demetrius carved through a thin flap of tough muscle.  More blood welled.  Galen handed the pin to his young assistant, and the muscle was secure.  

                "Stay close to the cartilage of the throat, lad," he remonstrated a little too testily.  "The jugular lies just left, and under the next muscle fiber.  You cut that, and all we've done is in vain."  Demetrius, dutiful, repositioned the scalpel more to his Master's liking, looking up briefly with a small twitch of lips, having caught the pun on '_vain_'.  The Master's eyes softened somewhat before refocusing on the task at hand.  

The monkey's vocalizations of pain seemed inexhaustible.  _It will be over soon enough_, the old man thought, oddly discomfited by the creature's cries before remembering he was, first and foremost, a scholar of Pergamun, and his pity retreated behind the cool rationale he had cultivated throughout his distinguished career.  

                Demetrius had started on the other side of the creature's small throat in same systematic fashion, the creature's cries having dropped to anguished moaning when a knock came to the door.  Irritably, Galen looked up, shouting, "Not now!  How often do I have to tell you, no summons when I am in the middle of a--"

                The servant, a young girl with terrified eyes and pale, pasty skin, poked her head through the opening timidly apologizing. "Master, I'm sorry.  But the man downstairs insisted.  He...he bears the...the-- She stumbled, taking in the scattering of preserved animals about the room, severed, discarded limbs, and skeletons of various species.

                "Well, out with it, girl," Galen commanded, annoyed.  

                His voice brought her wide eyes back to him, and her face skewed in concern, pity for the monkey, still alive, in partial vivisection, upon the table in back of the man she served.  When she spoke this time, though, her words came out, still low and restrained, but steady.  "He bears the seal of the Imperial house, Master, and commands you see him at once."

                Which made Galen, already in a sore humor, curse under his breath, waving the girl out impatiently.

                "Demetrius," he sighed.  "I'm sorry.  You can either attempt to finish our experiment today, but without my guidance, or you can put the poor creature out of its misery, and we can obtain another monkey from the Forum tomorrow.  My time, most likely, is going to be occupied for the rest of this day's remaining."  His young apprentice noticed, wonderingly, the grim line of his master's mouth amidst the still richly curling beard, more white than the brown it once had been.

                "I think I'll attempt to continue, Master.  If it is allowed, of course."

                "Oh of course it's allowed," Galen grumbled in irritation, wiping his hands off on the apron covering his flowing robes.  "I wouldn't have said for you to do so if it wasn't.  Just try not to spray too much blood everywhere if you hit a damned artery!"

                At that he slammed the door behind him, exiting the room with even, long strides.  As he descended the stair well to the parlor on the first floor of his apartments, he paused for a moment, trying to calm himself and gather his wits.  If his guess was correct, and the man who was waiting in his receiving room was who the distinguished scholar suspected, he would need all the tranquil reserve of the academic he'd learned to portray over the years when serving the royal family.  These were dangerous times in Rome for many of the learned classes: philosophers, mathematicians, poets, satirists and the like.  It was not such a far cry to nail down and execute one meager physician, known for doing dissections in a city that frowned more often than not, on such untraditional, and tasteless modes of anatomical study.  

                Rome, as he had discovered over the years, was not Alexandria, and was not given to the same lifting freedom of enlightenment and intellectual pursuit that the City of the Pharos was known for--especially since the death of his beloved Marcus Aurelius.  He still had his doubts about how that had incidentally come about, but to give voice to such empty suspicions was asking for a death wish himself.  Hence, such thoughts would be taken with him to the grave.

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                He entered the darkened interior of his parlor where the light from the open courtyard of the garden, surrounded by stone colonnades outside, offered worship to the sky above, sheltering all of humanity.  The natural light never seemed to penetrate far into the room, though-- a room sparsely decorated, and not overly luxurious.  Comfortable, maybe; a couch off to one side along a wall, colorful frescos of idyllic pastoral vistas that urban dwellers only dreamt of when wishing to escape the crushing crowds of the Eternal City.  A small, elegantly carved table with gracefully twining legs wrapped by embossed, silvered leaves of metallic ivy was next to the couch, and held a platter with two wine goblets and a small glass pitcher.  

                Galen, bowing deeply to the man seated on the couch presently, wishing his intuition for once, would fail him when it came to suspecting the worst of situations, thanked the gods for untold mercies, promising he would be more diligent in his religious practices.  At least some mindful servant had brought the unanticipated guest refreshment.  He only hoped it wasn't the common table wine he usually drank each evening, but the cask of Flanerian he saved for only the most celebratory of occasions.  When he remembered.  

                This was not one of those occasions.  

                "Good evening, most honored of unexpected guests," the Master started off, not daring to meet the man's eyes until commanded to rise.  "How may I be of service to his Majesty."

                The guest, sipping lightly from his goblet, placed it back on the table with a light, silvery clink.  His voice was low, fatigued sounding, but with a hiss to its intonation that set Galen on edge, making him think of the monkey's cries from upstairs.  "Come now, Master Galen.  Is this how you greet a man who is nearly like family to you.  You were a second father to me as a boy. Now kiss me as is only proper between closest and fondest friends."

                The seasoned scholar rose as commanded, looking up at long last to come forward and place the kiss of greeting upon each cheek of the drawn, shadowed face of the young Emperor.  Stepping back, taking a seat upon a stool randomly set into the corner of the parlor, he kept his outer facade neutral, but his inner thoughts were a jabbering turmoil of anxious curiosity.  

                "Forgive me, your Majesty.  I have not seen you since your were...raised to the title of Caesar upon your father's death," the Master articulated carefully.  "I did not want to presume upon your familiarity, and cause you undue offense."  

                The younger man's face, a living, animated sculpture of beauty warring with depravity, momentarily stilled in emotion at mention of his father, before breaking into a slow, uncomfortable smile.  "I would never consider it a presumption, should you so wish to be admitted to my audience whenever _you_ would desire, Master Galen.  I have always held you in highest regard, and have trusted you whole-heartedly over the years.  Trust, you see, is something I am finding difficult to retain with those who occupy my deepest...familiarity, as you call it," the younger man's voice coloring with pain. His gaze had shifted to some intangible distance over Galen's shoulder, as though his mind was summoned to a hurtful memory.    

Surely the circles under the young Caesar's eyes were not from the strain of rulership, but perhaps, just perhaps it was so, Galen thought, attempting to give the young men the benefit of the doubt.  The tortured, bizarre light that came through in the dark wells of those eyes when the Master "emhed" , trying to summon the young emporer away from this sudden cloud of evil pnuema, however, reflected something else: not so much an image of ill-health, at least not physically.  A glimpse of an unwell soul, Galen figured, as he waited for the young Caesar to come back from his internal journey.  

                The children of the Aurelii had, each one, inherited something of their mother's renowned beauty, and their father's hardiness.  It had been different in Commodus, though; he'd been bestowed the beauty, but the inflictions of his childhood were not seen in his other siblings.  Galen had been convinced, more than once, when Commodus was a much smaller boy, the young man sitting before him would not survive past childhood.  As he'd grown, though, it seemed the gods had other plans, for the only surviving son of Marcus Aurelius grew more robust as he'd matured, actually entering young manhood not as afflicted with the maladies of the body which had so plagued him in his early years.

                It was only now, however, studying the lines of his pale face, from which his eyes seemed to glow like the dark wells to Tartaurus, that Galen was realizing something had indeed, died in the young man.  Or if not died, then wilted, as the flowers of springtime do when the rain they so depend on, fails to come, and the soil grows parched, lacking precious nourishment.  The Shadow was winning in this man, and was far beyond any help Galen might once have been able to provide.

                Commodus blinked, suddenly, his dark gaze sliding back to the older man seated patiently on the stool, the dark pools of madness dimming to sanity, as if soothed by the Master's quiet presence.  "Forgive me, my old friend.  I have been...quite occupied of late."  What else could the older man do but nod his acceptance?  "I need your help," Caesar appealed without further preamble.

                Galen couldn't keep himself from flinching at the bald entreaty in the man's voice, saying as evenly, and calmly as he could, "As I said, I am at the Emperor's service.  What ever you need, I am at your disposal."  The tone was one the younger man seemed to recall, on some subconscious level from his boyhood years, when he'd be taken by fever, sweating and crying out in delirium for a father who would never come, always far removed to the vast reaches of the Empire.  

                Commodus' posture relaxed just perceptibly, a tension leaving his body, which Galen hadn't been aware of until that moment.

                "What I do is for the good of the Empire, my friend, but what I must ask of you may call into conflict the Oath I know you hold dear."

                Galen responded in the same calming voice as before.  "I will be the one to decide that, Caesar, but I can not know until you say what, specifically, you would need."

                "To take a man's life."  The words hung there, echoing in the hush of the approaching dusk, like a curse whispered to the Goddess of the Underworld.  From under his shock of mussed, waving hair, that ember of shadow burned again, banked coals upon the fires of madness, as Commodus held Galen's astonished eyes.

                Before the older man could stop himself, he heard the words slipping, stupidly, past his lips.  "I cannot raise my hand with harmful intent, to take another man's life purposely, Commodus.  You have known that since you were a boy."

                Galen held himself to stillness, even while his insides turned liquid with fear, watching as the demon-light rose higher, kindling in the young Caesar's eyes, before being extinguished, warring emotions crossing his haggard, sublime beauty:  betrayal, mistrust, anger, violence and finally--to the quiet relief of the older man--acceptance.

                He sank back into the sofa, at long last, seemingly exhausted, as though the inner battle had worn his resources, sapped his strength, and Galen felt an instant's pity, seeing the young boy, lost and sickly, come through the veneer of Imperial magnificence, rich draperies of cloaking and scarlet robes.  

                "No, of course you cannot harm another man.  And I was foolish to ask that of you.  But you must see," the young man said, a torn expression wearing across his features, "if I do not do this thing, the balance of the entire Empire will be upset.  _He_ has the backing of the mob, and of the Senate.  And neither of them, _my friend_," Commodus said with piercing emphasis, "have taken kindly to you over the last few years.  Have they?"

                Galen felt himself waver in his stool, understanding the current of meaning in the other man's words.  His safety had long depended upon the good will of the Imperial family.  While many of the world inhabiting Rome's Academy could well appreciate the contributions of learning Galen had supplied over a long history, trying to uncover the secrets of the body and the mind, there was still a greater majority--a majority that carried more weight in deciding the fates of men's lives, and consequently their deaths--held by the superstitious thrall of religion, fostered by rumors of witchcraft and unholy, maligned happenings within the walls of Galen's household.  

                And Galen, whilst he honored Hippocrates, honored his safety and his thirst for knowledge even more.  Besides, he was Greek.  What did it matter, the life of one Roman who was to answer for crimes against his Imperial majesty.  He was a slave in any case.  A gladiator, if the crowds' gossip could be believed.  The last time Galen served under the bowels of the Coliseum, he'd been a young man himself, learning from the injured how to repair wounds, identifying specific structures of the human body exposed by severed limbs, maimings inflicted by the sword, spear or trident.  It had been during that time, Galen had realized, the fruitless endeavor of his efforts.  Most of the men he got to know ended up dying not too long after.  The entertainers were a rough, sorry lot inhabiting a harsh world where one man's death could mean another's meal; most certainly, another's life.  Some escaped to freedom, but only following a blood-bath shed of other innocents.  A freedom sullied by death.    

                For sanity's preservation, and emotional integrity, Galen quickly learned to see the men, not as belonging to the faces of individuals, but as a long, endless stream of uncouth rabble.  Expendable, whose lives were worth little more than the price of the infamous mob's amusement, and the progress of scientific learning.  

                And the Coliseum sounded in sorrier straits than ever before if Demetrius spoke truth, following in the footsteps of his great Master, learning the techniques of surgery from the Arena infirmary's ever-available supply of human bodies, having rounded in the Coliseum over the last two days.  The doctors,  desperate for available help, trying to stay up with the daily influx of butchering, recently took on two women, allowing them to offer their assistance without question.  Peasant women, though they practiced with great skill, or so Demetrius had insisted.  They were cauterizing, repairing hemorrhage, performing ligations of severed arteries, splinting fractures, and even--gods be taken to the high winds of comedy--even demonstrating the appropriate way to do amputations.  

                Galen, after hearing how his young assistant had gone on, laughed ruefully, saying it was more likely Demetrius had been taken by the looks of the younger woman as she'd shown him how to leave a flap of skin at the end of a severed limb so it might cover the stub of bone and staunch the flow of blood, not realizing their actual incompetence.  _They probably bungled more amputations than demonstrated,_ was his comment, catching the look of doubt in the young apprentice's eyes.   

                Finally, after much inward deliberation, the seasoned physician calculated his reply, fit to please the young Caesar's desire, but not quite betray his service to the Oath.  "Perhaps if you ask me just... how you wish to kill this man, I may provide some guidance, if not actually perform the action."

                It was the correct thing to say, given the look of relief, and an unpleasant avarice, alighting the young Caesar's drawn features.  "A stiletto...a stab wound.  I've heard they are fatal, but I must know where I might drive it in."

                "The heart," Galen replied, trying not to let the distaste in his voice come through, "would be the quickest and easiest."

                The younger man waved his hand in negating fashion.  "No.  It must be somewhere inviting a  slower, equally fatal, mind you, but…slower death.  So his life seeps out drop, by careful drop, by--care-ful--drop," finishing in precisely enunciated syllables, his lips shaping the words as though they were terms of endearment.  

                Galen voiced a considering, "Ah," before going on to explain his next thought.  "There are many organs about the body, if splintered, can make for a very...unkind, and a very slow death.  You see, we humans are a great work of art...the gods image some philosophers say, but we are all too fragile.  We bleed inside and out, can get infection, and fever, and few men, if not properly tended, can survive such...travesties to their systems."

                Commodus was leaning toward the physician, eager for more information.  "It must be placed somewhere that will be damaging, but none too obvious.  To be covered with armor, you see."

                Galen eyed the young man with distant curiosity.  "As I said, there are many places within the human body that serve such a purpose well.  But if I might ask, your Majesty, why such planning for a slave.  He's only a gladiator, no?  Surely he will be killed in the Arena soon enough, and you could save yourself the effort."

                The look Commodus gave the old physician froze his soul, for it was inhuman--an expression, Galen couldn't help but think, that Hades in his Realm of the Dead must wear when judging the souls passing to the afterlife.  

                "Not this man.  He wronged me, and he has wronged my family.  Greatly."  The words echoed throughout the stillness of the parlor, followed by a screaming silence.

                The Master was scared to ask, but couldn't contain his sudden interest.  "What did he do, my Majesty?"

                The kindling of the coals blazed, tangible and hot, incinerating sanity for heartstopping seconds, as the young ruler ground his stare into the old man before him.  "He dared to steal away all those I have loved.  And now...he must pay."  The words rasped from his throat like the dying gasps of the monkey in the dissecting room above, young Demetrius finally severing the nerve supplying the voice of the animal.

                "And what sort of man," Galen inquired, his tones dropped to a hesitant whisper, his insides sick with the feeling of nausea as he watched Commodus' visage contort with unrational hatred, "would dare injure Caesar so?"  

                "Maximus-Decimus-Meridius."

                The words fell, like a hammer upon three single nails, palpable with the malevolence burning in the man who was deemed the most powerful in the Empire.

                Galen fought down the urge to be sick, keeping his own features carefully controlled, murmuring a comforting, "Ah, I see," hoping his voice would once more calm the younger man's inner demon.

                But the old Master's mind, wandering down its own corridors of memory, saw no mere gladiator, cheapened by his state in life, hardened to the gore and valueless impression of death that surrounded him at every turn.

                What he beheld was the face of a man, a general, etched with the concerns of responsibility, fatigued with worry, leaning over a weakened Marcus Aurelius, who had fought off a bout of some Plague-like sickness over four or five years ago, brought by recruits from the East. A man who had wept, openly and sincerely, for one of his own soldiers--a young, nameless legionnaire--who had died from wound rot, in the infirmary of Vindabona, having fallen in service to the Emperor.  The young soldier, on his dying breath, gasped out, _strength and honor_.  Maximus had seen the dead soldier to his funeral pyre, bearing on his bloodied chest, one of the general's own military decorations--a heavy disc of gold and bronze, scrawled with the S.P.Q.R. of the Legions.  

                The physician had always admired the man's moral dignity, and knew he'd been greatly loved by the former Emperor.  When he'd heard of the General's supposed treason against the newly ascended Commodus, his execution over two years ago, immediately following Marcus' own passing, Galen couldn't quite believe the truth of such events.  The man who'd affectionately been called by his fellow troopers, _Maximus the Farmer_, Galen would never have believed capable of attempting to wrest away the seat of Caesar.  The man, Galen recalled, had nearly balked at being named the Supreme Commander of the Felix Legions.  Ruling an Empire simply hadn't been in the man's character.

                It came to the old physician that he was suddenly very tired.  He'd walled himself up in his home, doing the occasional lecture at the Museum of Rome, but otherwise paying little heed since returning from the front over two years ago, to the heated political conflicts and grappling for power that always swayed back and forth between Emperor and Senate—the essence of Roma Mater.  He hadn't realized he was so out of touch.

                The hooded look Galen threw at the young man before him concealed as much as he hoped it seemingly disclosed.  Commodus, alive to the change in the Master, sat straighter, anticipation all over his pale face and darkly burning eyes.

                "If Caesar would be so amenable, I would like to show him something that is downstairs.  A collection of old skeletons I kept, for some odd reason, after I was done using the corpses that once housed their bones.  I hope," he said, gadging the younger man's reaction, "this is not displeasing to you."  Commodus frowned, puzzled.  "Some people," Galen explained, "find these things to be...rather disturbing."

                "We're talking of murdering a man, and you think I'm going to be thrown by a few skeletons," Commodus observed, his brief grin more a sneer.  "I only wonder why it is necessary to show me your skeletons at all, however."

                Galen rose, indicating he would lead the way to his lower level storage room, answering smoothly, "So I might demonstrate, with more clarity, just where you would drive in a stiletto to accomplish your desired…task." He was careful to already be heading out of the room, facing away from Commodus when he added, "You don't want to be doing this more than once, now.  Do you?"

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Two hours later, well after the sun had set, though the velvet blue of dusk still colored the sky overhead, Galen murmured his last departing words to Caesar, who had come accompanied by a rather nefarious-looking man with a receding line of curling gray hair, donning the toga of a Senator.  A stolid looking Praetorian was their third companion.  

                In a voice modulated for the exact amount of gratitude, Commodus said softly, from the back of the horse he'd ridden, "I thank you for your assistance, Master.  Your knowledge of the human anatomy is extensive, and your suggestion on spiking the kidney, ingenious.  I never realized the placement of a pig's organs is so like our own. It may explain something in the nature of some men I've met over the years."  He heard the Senator snicker from behind Commodus, saw the young Emperor glance back, a smirk across his pallid, hollowed features.  Then, turning to the Master once more, he said,  "You will be well compensated for your efforts.  I apologize if this has called into some conflict your...moral obligations."

                Galen shook his head, an abbreviated, self-effacing motion, bowing deeply.  "I only showed you where to hit.  Someone else must drive the stroke, Caesar.  I can only hope your endeavor meets with…unequaled success."

                "Oh, I have no doubt, Master Galen.  No doubt, in the slightest," came the rich, silken voice of young Caesar.  "We must be off.  Gods bless you in forwarding your knowledge of humanity, Master," Commodus said, touching his heals to the horse's sides, moving off down the lane. As the senator and the Praetorian fell in behind him on their own mounts, Galen saw the Praetorian glance back at the old doctor, a mask of sorrow and—was that guilt—across his stoic facade.

                It was too dark to discern, and Galen, with solemn neutrality, simply watched the three riders disappear into the shadows down the street at a slow trot, the clipping of the horses' hooves echoing even after they turned the bend into the plaza, heading back to the Palace.

                And then, he felt, for the first time in hours, a slow, real smile spread across his face.  A mixture of relief, and the final passing of the nausea which had been troubling him since Commodus' appearance.  

                Kidneys, as any anatomist knew, and as Galen had demonstrated at the Museum in Rome over the years doing his own dissections on various animals, including pigs, were placed in approximately the same orientation, varying little between different species.  They were somewhat below the last rib, attached to the back by a rich assortment of tissue--from what he could differentiate, was mostly connective fibers and fat.  

                Humans, of course, had twelve pairs of ribs, as most practiced physicians could tell any beginning student:  two pairs unattached (a curiosity, that, and one the Master was still trying to decipher the purpose of), those being the lowest placed; the other ten pairs branching out from the spinal cord, protecting the lungs and heart in a symmetrical, inward-curving framework.  

                If Commodus went for where Galen had advised, using the pig's skeleton to clarify the specific spot where driving the stiletto would cause the most harm, and hit the kidney--a finger's-width below the pig's fifteenth or sixteenth rib--he had assured the young Caesar success was only a mere bleed-out away.  

                In the human, the Master advised--nay, repeated at least three more times during the instruction--the one wielding the stiletto must be sure to aim for higher placement.  "Human's have fewer ribs, and our kidneys, while still held to the inside of the back like the pig's, actually lie up within the rib-cage itself, not below it.  You must be sure to hit here," Galen drilled, pointing to an area on the side of Commodus' back, somewhat between the seventh and eighth rib.

                At long last, when he could no longer hear the clopping of the hooves from the men's horses, and so figuring they were now out of hearing range, Galen actually allowed himself to laugh.  Anyone watching him in the deserted street would have thought him mad, perhaps, but not if they had known the reason.  

                Human dissection was outlawed in Rome, the fuss over sacrilege to the body before last rites were performed making the procedure too much of a hassle for most scholars to dare.  A waste as far as the Master was concerned.  The flesh no longer housed the vital pnuema of humanity; one might as well make use of it for the knowledge it provided, before it was burned or simply decayed.  The ignorance, in so far as human anatomy was concerned, would have horrified any decently trained physician from Athens to the far Parthian Empire.  But for the first time since having come back to the Eternal City, he thanked the gods for the mob's irrational superstitions and nonsensical dedication to empty tradition.  .  

                If Commodus managed to hit precisely where Galen had advised (and he was sure the young Caesar would), he may well get a part of a lung lobe, and certainly tear through some flesh and muscle coating the spaces over and between the rib cage.  If well tended, he'd seen a number of hardy men--which he was figuring the General-turned-Gadiator was--heal from a speared lung, especially when inflicted by a small weapon like a stiletto.  He would most likely bleed, losing quantities of his precious life's-liquid, and so perhaps, still be in danger of losing his life, too. And there was always the infamous infection. 

                But his kidney would be spared.  And that, as Galen was also very well aware, was of utmost importance.  Once damaged, few men ever recovered from such an injury to that precious organ of elimination, no matter the care gone into their attempted recovery.  

But in the game of life and death, a lung lobe, a few fibers of muscle torn and ribs penetrated, versus penetration of a kidney, and the man he'd once known as Maximus the Farmer might at least have a better chance of survival now that Galen had a chance to intervene.

                _Besides_, he thought with a slightly twisted sense of humor, _if those women Demetrius was speaking of truly are worth their salt in skill, let them deal with the aftermath of whatever our insane Caesar has planned._  And in the unlikely event they were summoned to try and save the life of one good man, who had once been a soldier of Rome, so much the better for their honor.  Women had no business doing men's work, but then, things always had been a little lax when considering the medical proprieties of the infirmaries in the Coliseum.

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                On that same night, in another corner of the Capital, in a spartan room at the base of a rickety old inn, where cockroaches and fleas kept common company with the humans who tried to find respite while scratching and squishing their six-legged guests in the dark, Maeve awoke, sitting up, shaking her head to orient herself back to the dingy abode and her woven bedmat.  The rancid scent brought by the wind shifting through the window, carried all the inglorious aromas of humanity up from the Cloaca Maxima, flowing into the Tiber, beyond the street their inn was built along.  For a moment, she had an overwhelming yearning for the fresh, clean wind ranging over the hills of her homeland.

                The prone form sprawled next to her shifted, muttering something about camels and slimy Sardinians before taking a deep breath, followed by a loud expulsion of air and a digusted cough.  "Ugh! How can people actually live along something that might get rid of their sewage, but smells so foul," Nemhyn spat in frustration.

                "Would you rather have the litter and waste in the streets, daughter," Maeve asked in a voice only shaking slightly with laughter.

                The look her daughter gave her was priceless--they usually were.  A balance between a violent urge to throw something at the woman who'd given birth to her, and the attempt to remember her manners in respecting those who, Nemhyn well understood, were her elders. 

                Never mind that Nemhyn herself was well into her second decade, closer to thirty summers than twenty, and a widow to boot.  She had been raised to hold her own had Nemhyn; accomplished in the Art, educated, and a world-wiser as they made their slow progress back from a three year pilgrimage to the East, Maeve couldn't help but feel a certain pride that her daughter evinced, all too readily, those traits of single minded independence she'd tried to instill throughout her girlhood. 

                But with her hair all in disarray, curls unfurling everywhere down her back, and her face scowling something furious, it was easy for Maeve to recall her daughter as a child little more than seven or eight summers.  

                And Nemhyn's caustic remark was all too typical of that child Maeve saw before her eyes just then. "Would it make a difference if the public officials did flood the streets with the Cloaca's contents.  There's so much rubbish in this quarter, you can't even walk down the lane without immersing yourself in some animal's dung heap.  Probably mixed in with a good bit of human's as well."

                Maeve tried to conceal her smirk, but her daughter saw it, and, as was her wont, even in ill-humor, the younger woman laughed, a delightful, deep-throated sound that built in mirth, and invited her mother to join in.  "Well, somewhere back around Athens you asked what it would take to offend my sensitivities, mother.  You now have your answer."

                Finally, Maeve let the remnants of her usual tranquil calm drop away completely, still chuckling, admitting, "This is pretty extreme, isn't it?  Even I hadn't thought the conditions in the Jewish quarter were so bad."  In emphasis of her statement, she groped in darkness of their room, slapping at a flea biting along her leg,  while her daughter took her sandal, and with a loud 'WHAP', sent another cockroach to his inevitable end with crunch.  

                Without further ado, Maeve said, sober once more, the images of her dream/vision still fresh in her mind, "We go to the Arena tomorrow."

                In the darkness, with the low glimmer of moonlight just illuming her daughter's chisled features, inherited from Maeve, whose graceful lines of lip and brow were, perhaps more dramatically accentuated upon the younger woman's facade (that from her father's side), she could see the wry furrow of Nemhyn's frown.

                "Why is that a surprise?  We've been there everyday since coming to this...nightmare of cities a week ago."

                "I mean," Maeve explained, rising on one elbow, her braid falling in back of her shoulder, "we go to actually watch the games tomorrow.  Not to work the infirmary."

                Nemhyn eyed her mother with a pondering light.  "You've had some premonition again, haven't you?  You've been having a lot of those lately, since Uncle Gracchus came under arrest."

                "I would have requested an audience, but it puts us in too much risk at the moment as far revealing our rank and identities.  The last letter I received from you father, six months ago, said Commodus has taken little note of the situation in Britannia.  He replied that unless there was an actual breach of the Wall, if father ever plagued him with such menial concerns again, he might reconsider his posting."  Maeve, with an atypical gesture of worry, wiped stray strands from her forehead that had escaped their braid, sighing.  "He will be very distressed to learn of Gracchus' arrest.  The last thing he would need is to find out is his daughter and wife were thrown into prison as well."

                "He does wisely to heed the Emperor's warning, mum--if the talk about that general now fighting in the Arena is true"

                A quiet sigh, almost a defeated sound was the muted response from her mother. "Aye.  Very true, Nemi.  Very true," using the diminutive of her daughter's name from long ago.

                Nemhyn rose to sitting, her light linen shift, sleeveless, moving about her body with a quiet rustle of fabric.  "You are troubled, aren't you, mum.  You haven't called me that for years." Her words, though attempting humor, stood in contrast to the concern in her eyes, and she reached out to take her mother's hand in her own.  .

                Her mother's gaze grew distant, unfocused as she uttered in quiet undertones, "Something has shifted.  I don't know what, the course of events which were meant to be now stand in confusion.  The Scales of Zeus deciding the fate of Hector have become unbalanced, and a future has become clouded once more."

                Nemhyn's skin pebbled, and she noticed that the night sounds of the city's million inhabitants, always present to an annoying level of background noise, had suddenly gone dim.  She rubbed her hands over her arms, trying to warm them in the air which had taken an abrupt turn for the chillier, shivering as her mother's voice, dropping almost to a chant, become tinged with uncommon sorrow.

                "He seeks reunion, and the last wishes of a deceased Emperor.  Hai gods, but They will not give it to him!  They will not give it to him," Maeve shuddered, her voice, low, became a keening cry of grief.  "I do not know why, but they deny him this one last thing, as They took away all else," her voice desperate.  

                Nemhyn reached for her mother again, wrapping her arms around her twitching form as the older woman wept a grief not her own.  "Hush, mum.  Hush," she crooned, well familiar with these episodes when her mother viewed the paths crossing between the wheel of different worlds and futures.  

                At long last, sometime nearer to the out-tide hours following midnight, when her mother gave one final, helpless sob, and a convulsive shudder that rattled Nemhyn to her bones so that she only hugged Maeve tighter until it passed, the older woman quieted, her breathing coming in gasping exhaustion.  She sounded like she'd run a marathon, but as Nemhyn smoothed the dampened, silver streaked hair off the older woman's brow, kissing her forehead as though she were the mother and not the daughter, she saw the wry, ironic glint of her mother's familiar tranquillity reestablishing itself in the ice-pale eyes.  

                Finally, breaking their embrace with a gentle nudge, Maeve squeezed her daughter's hand one last time before turning to the routine task of unbraiding and rebraiding her hair.  Nemhyn, aiding her, combed her fingers through the silver-peppered strands, still thick and soft, despite Maeve being over fifty.  The younger woman unknotted the snarls gently, wishing her own hair, as equally long, but never so amenable to simple fingers, could be so easily worked.  Curls didn't lend themselves to such smooth combing.

                "How bad was it this time?"  The question was blunt, weary.  

                "Not one of your more dramatic ones," her daughter replied.  "Not like the time you decided to seizure and foam during Olivia's wedding, when I was fourteen, screaming about blood and miscarriages, ill fortune upon the bride."

                Her mother, as she'd hoped, chuckled with wicked glee--a young girl's chuckle.  "Sometimes it's for effect.  Don't tell me that overly-pompous brat of Marcia Servillia's didn't deserve it.  She was as spoiled as they come, and not even kind hearted to make up for it."

                Nemhyn's fingers paused, giving her mother a frown from the back before continuing the simple plait.  "I was still embarrassed.  You are certainly _not_ sympathetic to appearances."

                "Consider it character building," came her mother's humor tinged reply, her daughter sniffing loudly in answer.

                After a moment's silence, as Nemhyn finished securing the last strands of hair bunched between her fingers, tying off the braid with a strip of cloth, her mother turned around once more.  She studied her daughter's face, contemplation and a fond love plain across the older woman's finely carved features, lined with the evidence of her years, but still beautiful.  

"What comes next," she said into the hushed quiet of the early hours short of dawn, "is very unclear, but I can feel it is also very dangerous."

                Nemhyn's lips tightened, drawing to a thin line, then relaxed, and she blinked, her gaze shifting away for a moment, then back to her mother's familiar face.  "Very dangerous, but I'm sure," she said with a sigh, "very necessary.  Am I right?"

                "Always," came the satisfied response.

                Lying back down, pillowing her head under one arm, her mother's action mirroring her own, Nemhyn said, up to the cracked crumbling ceiling above, a resignation of sorts, "Then I suppose we go the Arena tomorrow.  And whatever happens, it undoubtedly requires our intervention."

                "Undoubtedly," her mother agreed easily, sleep evident in her voice as she yawned.

                Nemhyn turned to face the wall, hearing the scurrying of another cockroach, her eyes growing heavy enough with needed slumber that she didn't care, presently, if the slimy thing crawled into her ear.  Stifling her own yawn, she breathed out instead, "We aren't the Fates, Mother.  We aren't their servants here in this life."

                "On the contrary," her mother's serene voice came to her from the side, "we are all Fate's servants.  Some of us just tend to take a more active role than others."

                She heard her daughter sniff again at that, grind her teeth and mutter something about cockroaches and sand mites.  

                "Are you still having flashbacks to that suitor of yours in Damascus," Maeve asked with mock-innocence.

                "Oh, go to sleep, mother!"  But the words came out in a giggle, albeit an infuriated one.  "If you tell father about that when we get back to the Island, I'll absolutely kill you.  I'll tell him how you were solicited for you services--and not your medical ones--by the entire chariot team in Ephesus!  I swear."

                Her mother's laughter, while doubly irritating, was also reassuring, and brought Nemhyn an elusive peace, leading her into the world of welcome slumber once more.  


End file.
